Here comes the season that brings strong feelings about food to just about everyone: The Winter Holidays! The holidays come with feasting and all manner of special treats and temptations, which both bring us great happiness and sometimes stress and digestive upset. Ideally we can enjoy the former with a minimum of the latter, but…
Welcome to part two of my “cheat sheet” on the many carrier oils that Smile Herb offers! In part one, we covered Almond through Black Seed Oils; today we’ll dive into the other half of our list. Carrier oils may be used alone as facial moisturisers, hair and scalp treatments, and body oil. They are…
As we learn more about herbalism and natural health, many of us are increasingly inspired to “DIY.” Many health and beauty products are easily made in custom formulation once you know some important characteristics of the ingredients and techniques! To that end, Smile provides classes and workshops to grow your herbal knowledge and also offers…
Summer has made its arrival here and with it the joys of being outdoors more, along with the miseries of insect pests. Mosquitoes, ticks, and other irritating or dangerous insects can definitely inhibit our enjoyment of the great outdoors but the many negatives to heavy chemical solutions like DEET leave most of us feeling discouraged.…
One of the first medicinal herbs many people encounter is German Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla syn. or Matricaria recutita). It is a ubiquitous tea herb with a history of use going back thousands of years, found on shelves of supermarkets and referenced in both Peter Rabbit and pop music. For such a well-known herb, however, in…
A frequent issue we are asked about in the shop is joint pain. Whether caused by arthritis, injury, or autoimmune disease, joint pain is challenging and can seriously limit our activity and enjoyment of life. It is one of the most common forms of chronic pain that Americans suffer with – approximately 53 million adults…
“Let food be thy medicine” is often quoted to make the point that a healthy diet is the best way to get all of the nutrients that our bodies need. In an ideal world, we’d all have perfect diets that supplied us with a complete profile of vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients to keep our bodies…
Last week I shared some herbs that may be supportive in more acute anxiety situations, including insomnia. We all want (immediate) relief when we are suffering with pain, whether it be physical or emotional! But with complex mental conditions such as anxiety, there is almost always more to them than meets the eye, and simply…
Anxiety is a word that we hear quite a lot these days, and with good reason: there is plenty of it to go around! We use “anxious” to describe a whole range of feelings, from nervousness to paralyzing panic attacks, from back-to-school to global events. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anxiety this way: Anxiety…
